Ninth Inning Rally
by scullyseviltwin
Summary: Delirious Sara, the sport's section and helpful Grissom.


_Written due to lack of sleep last night and the Red Sox losing and me just not wanting to do homework at all. Thanks Sara.

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She'd never really taken the time to catalogue the color of his eyes, or taken long moments devising synonyms for the delightful cadence and hue of his voice. It wasn't her style. His eyes were blue, his voice rich and thick because she was Sara Sidle and words were not her strong suit. 

Delirium had encroached upon her brain sometime around the thirty-fifth hour she'd been awake, and instead of his eyes being blue they were cerulean and his lips gave forth syllables dipped in honey.

Sara felt the casual need to play scrabble and lay all the words that were _him_ out on the board. A few points here, a double word score there and she'd lay him all out over triple words and double letters and even the boring off-gray spaces that didn't count for anything.

Little tiles swam in her head and even as her eyes drooped a bit, she couldn't drag herself off of the lab stool and carry her body across town to her bed. There was no work to be processed, no cases to assist on, nothing to really hold her to the spot and yet still she wouldn't get up.

She'd long since finished the New York Times Crossword (finding a plethora of Grissom synonyms in there) and had read over most of what she considered to be the pertinent sections of the paper.

Long hours ago, she'd passed the point of nausea which usually accompanied extensive periods of consciousness and had ushered her way into complete disorientation. When her fingers touched the mass-produced paper of the Times, her senses took a moment to catch up with her, registering the slightly abrasive quality of the newspaper.

So, she trailed her fingers back and forth, her brain lurching at the annoying sensation, but she couldn't stop. Her brain wouldn't allow her fingers to stop dragging back and forth, back and forth.

Sara wondered how Grissom's beard would feel under her fingers and how many words she could come up with to describe it. Certainly it would be prickly, like a cactus. Cacti made her think of the desert and briefly she pondered over what Grissom and the desert would smell like if they intermingled.

Coffee had since lost its effect and after a while she had resorted to splashing cold water over her eyes just to keep them open. The radio, instead of keeping her alert, had begun to lull her, every song's bass line forming a rhythm in her head. She found meaningful beats in the ticking of the clock as it mingled with the hum of the below-bench mini fridge. Broken lyrics of her own design began to bubble up out of her as she turned the newspaper pages in time with the refrigerator-clock song. Each tick seemed longer than the juxtaposing tock and Sara wondered for a minute if time had slowed down.

Her hands stilled at the sports section, a large photo of Jason Giambi gracing the page, body twisted, bat held at a forty-five degree angle in front of him. Her head tilted as she imagined that pitch that had been thrown at him in order for his body to react in such a way; he looked uncomfortable and she debated the idea of standing and assuming the same position, simply to find out what it felt like.

Bad idea, she thought. But even as she thought, the idea of thinking any more made her want to stop thinking all together. So, she stared.

Slightly bloodshot eyes trailed over words that made no sense, landing on the box scores.

Vaguely, Sara recalled Grissom mentioning something to her about statistics but even as her mind grabbed onto the numbers under the heading Red Sox, she forgot what baseball was and had to try rather hard to recollect it.

.311, .309, .286…

Grissom chose that moment to grace her with his presence, but the sight she presented startled him; her mouth was slightly open, eyes wide, apparently staring at nothing. Her hair had fallen flat and her body looked just about ready to slide off of the stool.

And… she had the sports page open in front of her; something was clearly amiss. "Sara?"

It took her a long moment to turn to him and when she did he found her not simply tired, but in a state that bordered directly on zombification. It frightened him, so he stepped forward, into the room and placed his bundle of files down on the harshly-lit layout table.

"Shift ended," she said, voice somehow detached from her.

That was clear. Shift had actually ended a day ago, she just hadn't taken the time to notice… or care. "I see that," licking his lips, Grissom sidled right up next to her so she wouldn't have to focus her eyes too sharply to really register his company. "So why are you here?"

"Baseball," was her one-word answer. "I'm reading about baseball." Holding up the paper, she pointed to a small insert detailing the ERA of Mark Prior. "He plays for the Cubs." She pressed her finger into the paper over his picture and didn't remove it. "He pitches."

Again, he licked his lips and nodded. "You know, I'm pretty sure that you should go home now," his voice was gentle, not insistent and she turned to smile at him.

"Probably," then she continued, "But I'm too tired to get up… I think."

"Well, Sara, you're reading about baseball, so I think you've gone round the bend as far as being tired is concerned." With a nod, "You've passed into delirium, that's not healthy."

Agreeing, she shook her head. "Probably not."

"So maybe we should get you home before you pass out on Jeter's picture there and have a big number two stuck on your cheek?" Even as he spoke the words, he couldn't believe how gentle and helpful he was being. He was stunned to find that it made him feel rather content (deep down, in an offsetting way) to offer his help to her.

"Maybe…"

And as she tried to stand, pressing her hands down on the table for leverage, she faltered. Her knees were weak (and this time, not because of his presence but rather because her body just didn't feel like supporting what little weight it had to support) and her head was swimmy and she could feel her blood pumping at the pulse points in her neck, wrists and temples. Her muscles pulled and stretched as she attempted to resume standing (seventh inning, isn't that when they stretched in baseball, she couldn't remember…) but still, she couldn't seem to keep her back straight and her knees locked.

Doing the only thing that came to mind, he grabbed her arms, attempting to steady her as one of her palms came up to press flat over his right pectoral.

So warm… desert, cactus, outfield, thesaurus, Grissom.

His shirt prickled beneath her hand and she pondered for a moment why she was touching his chest in the first place. "Why are you helping me?" Her other hand reached down and scooped up the sports section and tucked it under her arm. "Red Sox are only a half game out in first," her head lolled a bit; she'd never been that tired in her life. "Only a half game. Half a game…"

A yawn escaped her and she tried to hide it; the only thing she succeeded doing was nudging Grissom in the chin with her elbow. "Yanks right behind em. You know, Bernie Williams-"

"Sara you need to get home and you need to sleep," his hands left their place on her right bicep and he turned to secure his arm around the back of her shoulders; she fell back sloppily into his pseudo-embrace. "So I'm going to tell Jim I'll catch up with him later," he spoke as if to a child, his _honeyed _voice lulling her into a peaceful oblivion, her twitching smile the only sign that she was still conscious.

"David Ortiz, it says he's gonna be MVP you know… I want to be MVP… why are you helping me? Shift is almost over I think," glancing down at her watch, Sara nodded and looked over at him. "Why are you helping me?" Squeezing her eyes shut she swallowed the majority of one yawn before the tail end slipped out and her eyes squeezed out some lack-of-sleep tears. "I can do this on my own, I don't need your help." But even as she said it, she really didn't believe it. Words still weren't making much sense to her.

"Of course you do," he said with a smile, arm tightening just a bit around her slouching body. "It's called the ninth inning rally," he said, voice light on her ears, a treat to be kept for her dreams later. "Now let me get you home."


End file.
